Champagne Books Announces Release of Nightingale Man by Jane Toombs

Excerpt - Only One of Its Kind by Jane Toombs

"ONLY ONE OF ITS KIND"

Champagne Books www.champagnebooks.com

A Christmas short story



Excerpt:

Last of all, I had to tell Annalee about the trip with Hal. "Hope you don't have any dates for us the week before Christmas," I began.

She widened her golden eyes at me, then shut them and winced. "Not again, Arno. Please don't tell me you're flying off somewhere at Christmas time."

What could I say to her, my beautiful Annalee? In a way it'd be easier not to be here at Christmas, not to look at each other, knowing all our attempts to produce our own little Christmas angel had failed. But I couldn't say that. She'd begun to talk adoption, but I want my own kid, not someone else's. Wrong-headed, maybe, but I often am, much as I love Annalee.

"I've never been gone at Christmas before," I pointed out.

"Maybe not. But how about my sister's wedding? And the Gilbert's anniversary party? I'm getting fed up with having to break commitments because you suddenly get an urge for the wild blue yonder."

"This time it's strictly business. Hal Peterson is stuck with a demand trip to Central America, and he needs a pilot." Which was more or less true.

She told me where I could go, what Hal could do with the trip and where the plane could be put, permanently. Annalee has quite a vocabulary.

Then I got the silent treatment, with Rufus our cat glaring at me balefully. He hates it when we have a disagreement. The day before I left, visualizing her putting up the damn hokey tree and decorating it all by herself, I promised to be home in time to help her if it killed me. So then we had a tearful parting scene after all.

What worries my wife is that I'm going to crash. I've shown her statistics, even acted insulted because she doubted my flying ability, but nothing can convince her that small planes are safe. Though most private plane crashes are pilot error, try to convince Annalee. She sees them as instances of some huge hand plucking the plane out of the sky on a whim. Try to argue with that.

Interview with Jane Toombs

Tami: Welcome to the nuthouse Jane....I mean, welcome to the blog! How are you doing?

Jane: Other than a tooth root abscess, I'm still truckin' along.

Tami: Tooth root abscess, that doesn't sound good. I hope you feel better soon. I was reading a little more about you on your bio and got extremely tired reading about your kids, grandchildren, cat, and computers. When you have some time when you are not reading and spending time with all of them, what do you do?

Jane: Alas, most of my time with my kids and grandchildren is online or by phone as none of them live nearby. And, since winter on the south shore of Lake Superior is fearsome, they visit only in the summer. So, since it gets colder every day now and snow is predicted for the weekend, we're gearing up for having to use the exercise machine instead of taking a walk every day. I do get a lot of writing done in the winter. Plus we're set to dig out the cat toys to amuse Kinko so she gets exercise, too. After snow falls, she's an inside cat. I'll be volunteering as a cataloger at our Historical Museum and will try to get the Viking to help me since they have a lot of stuff stacked up to be put into order and labeled.

Tami: Wow, you made me even more tired! And the mention of snow made my bones shiver. **burr, burr** We have four indoor cats and they decided to take all the 5 year old's stuffed animals and use them as their cat toys! :) Got to love kitties!

Jane: Hey, you do so much online for all of us that I don't know how you find the time.

Tami: Nah, it's easy....just clickity, click, click, click! You guys do all the work. I mean seriously, I noticed on your website that it said you have written 80 books. That's a typo right? There's no way that one person could write that many books. When did you start writing? What got you started?

Jane: My first book was published in 1973, so you can see I've had a lot of time to get to 80 plus. And it was my first novel-length. Before that I wrote short stories and never sold a one. How did I sell it? I took an off-campus writing class from the University of California, San Diego. Our instructor was a published mystery writer who announced at the first class session that if any of us weren't planning to try to sell what we wrote in class, then we'd better leave now before we paid the fee. He likened writing without trying to sell as akin to masturbation. Half the class left. The rest of us learned a lot. He liked the gothic I was writing and told me if I finished it and rewrote using his suggested edits, he'd send it to his agent. Being a newbie I merely thought that was nice of him. Little did I know it was close to a miracle. So I did and he did and his agent sold TULE WITCH to Avon. So I aquired an agent as well. Lucky me!

Tami: That's AWESOME! I like that instructor and I wasn't even in the class. It's a good thing that you took it when you did. Now, I would love if you would give me some information on your latest book from Champagne. You know we're all interested in hearing more about Once an Outcast.

Jane: Once an Outcast is the caboose of the Orphan Train Series, the sixth and last book. So in my book, at the end, ten years later, the six girls that met on their orphan train, get together with their husbands at a Boston hotel to meet again for a wonderful reunion. All have suffered, but now are happy. My heroine, half-gypsy Jehenna, went through some of the same horrendous difficulties as the others, but while their destinations were mostly farther west, she spent most of her ten years in the primitive logging towns of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. These were all wonderful books to research and write. And read! It's a great series. I also have Nightingale Man, a WWI spy-thriller, with a touch of romance, coming out from Champagne in January 2010. What happens when Lucky Luke Ray from Colorado, is inveigled into becoming a British spy?

Tami: Well, tell me a little more! You can't possibly be that mean and leave me hanging like that. I have to know more about Luke Ray. I have a thing for the leads in books. I have to know...tell me more! Please..... **gives you puppy dog eyes**

Jane: Luke meets his match in an English nurse named Kezia, who gets involved with him in a group attempt to infiltrate German-occupied Belgium to rescue Nurse Clara Barton from a Boche firing squad. Is it just a coincidence they're stymied at every turn--or are they being double-crossed?

Tami: That sounds wonderful - I can't wait to read. Yet another book to go on my TBR pile. I don't know what it is with all the Champagne authors, but I think you guys are trying to kill me slowly by blinding me by reading. What a way to go. Thanks so much for joining us today and we hope to see you back next week when we interview Allison Knight!

Chapter 1 - Tower of Shadows by Jane Toombs

TOWER OF SHADOWS

By

Jane Toombs

Chapter 1

I opened my eyes. What had awakened me? Overhead the branches of the oaks were gray shadows in the pre-dawn, a horse tethered along the creek nickered softly, then was still. The rich odor of coffee brewing wafted from the direction of the campfires.

I sat up. On one side of me Mimi stirred restlessly, on the other side Marona still slept soundly. I watched the ghostlike figures of two women who hovered near the caldron, their sweeping skirts alternately revealing and concealing the small tongues of flame licking at the bottom of the huge black kettle. A small yellow and white dog trotted up to me, sniffed my blanket but scuttled off toward the creek the moment I reached to pet him.

"Tina."

Startled, I glanced to right and left.

"Tina."

The whisper came from behind me. Looking over my shoulder, I saw my best friend, Sasha, standing just beyond the sleeping area, wisps of ground fog eddying around her green skirt.

"Tina," Sasha whispered again, "this is the day. Your day." She spoke not in English but in Romany.

I drew in my breath. Not that I'd forgotten--how could I possibly have forgotten?--but in my distress I'd pushed aside all thoughts of leaving. Pitar had yet to tell me where I was going and, more importantly, why. I only knew I must go. Today. Standing up, I shook and then brushed the folds of my skirt but saw that my blouse was wrinkled and stained past any tidying.

"Wait," I told Sasha.

Making my way between the sleeping women, I crossed a glade toward the dark outlines of the wagons, savoring the damp coolness as the dew from the new spring grass wet my bare feet.

Entering the family wagon, I breathed in the warm, close air carrying the familiar odors of burnt candles, food, and men and women. I found my other blouse in the trunk where I'd laid it, carefully folded, after the last washing. This blouse was my favorite, I liked the way the white muslin contrasted with the dark of my arms. I'd almost forgotten this deep mahogany wasn't my natural color.

Sasha was waiting for me beside the wagon steps. "Are you excited?" she asked.

"Yes. And a bit afraid. Like a baby about to take her first step."

"What is to be, will be."

I nodded. "As Pitar would tell us"--I deepened my voice to mimic the leader of the clan--"if you wish to run, you first must walk and if you wish to walk, you first must be prepared to fall many times."

We both laughed.

"Hush, hush," voices hissed from around us.

As we walked away from the wagons, the fiery red rim of the sun slid above the hill on the far side of the creek. The camp stirred around us, then all at once came awake. A dog barked, boys hurried into the woods, Pulika came to stand in the doorway of his wagon where he stretched and lazily scratched his ample stomach. From near the fires came the sounds of a woman's low laugh, the murmur of voices and the clatter of pans.

When I, with Sasha a step behind, approached the family campfire the talking stopped abruptly. I felt the eyes of all the women on me as I sat down to drink coffee, and eat the bread and cheese Pulika had "found" the day before in the village. Growing uneasy and then, despite my best intentions, apprehensive, I hurriedly finished eating and wiped my hands on my black skirt.

Grandmother MacArthur had considered cleanliness to be akin to godliness but, even when I remembered her many admonitions, it had been almost impossible not to slip into what she would have considered ungodly habits after I came to live in the camp four years before. At first some things bothered me, but I'd grown used to gypsy ways.

"Tina, are you ready?"

Looking up, I saw old Lyuba standing over me, her hands on her hips, her gold earrings, and the long chain of gold coins around her neck, glinting in the morning sunlight. The other women gathered behind Lyuba while the men and boys stood in small clusters nearby, watching us, while pretending not to.

"I'm ready." My calm voice belied my trepidation.

"Come, then."

Lyuba led the way from the campground past the horses to the path beside the creek. I followed with the older women just behind me, then Sasha and the other young women, and finally the girls. How I wished Sasha was next to me, Sasha who was my sister in all ways but heritage.

Already the ground mist was rising in curling wisps as the sunlight slanting between the trees foretold another hot June day. Birds sang their morning songs, while above my head a squirrel chattered at me from the branch of a chestnut tree. Below me the creek whispered tales of a long-ago Eden before men came to this land of mountains and valleys, of clear sparkling water, of sun and shadow.

I won't be afraid, I told myself. Even if I am, I won't show it.

From behind me came a throaty humming, almost a moaning, as Marona began to sing one of the old, old songs. Mala joined in, then Lyuba, then all the women were singing, all but me. The chant's slow and melancholy cadences spoke of sadness and despair, of love found only to be lost forever. As the last strains of the song faded away, Lyuba stopped and motioned to me.

When I reluctantly came to join her, we gazed in silence down into a glen where the stream cascaded over a waterfall before pausing to rest in an emerald pool. In the depths of the water a tiny fish glided into the sunlight, then darted out of sight between moss-covered rocks.

Lyuba clasped my hand and together we followed a path down the hill to the edge of the pool. The other women followed and sat on the gray boulders above us.

"I ask you a second time," Lyuba said. "Tina, are you ready?"

My hesitation was only momentary. "Lyuba, I'm ready."

"It is good." She looked above my head at the watching women. "Mala, come to us."

Mala, her long black hair streaked with gray, walked slowly down the hill, holding an earthenware jar in front of her like an offering. Placing the jar at my feet, she stepped back. While Lyuba looked inside, I noticed Sasha winking at me.

"Is your eye afflicted?" Lyuba missed little.

"Only by a grain of dirt," Sasha said, covering her mouth with her hand to hide her smile.

Her wink made me feel better. No matter what happened next, Sasha was with me. Last winter, beneath the new moon, we had pricked our fingers with a needle, mingling our blood as we vowed to be sisters forevermore.

"Mimi," Lyuba called. "Sasha."

With many stops and starts the two young women carried a heavy wicker hamper to the edge of the pool. Pulika, I knew, had "found" the hamper the year before in the city where Yolan died.

"Unbraid her hair," Lyuba ordered.

Stepping behind me, Sasha took out the pins and deftly undid the braids. When I shook my head, my dark brown hair fell almost to my waist.

"Remove her garments."

The two young women helped me pull my blouse and underwaist over my head, leaving my bronzed upper body naked.

"Now the skirts," Lyuba said.

"No!" I cried.

Lyuba drew in her breath sharply. Mimi and Shasha baked away, glancing uncertainly from me to Lyuba and back again.

Drawing in a deep breath, I faced her. "To have all the others see me is unclean."

"It is the way."

"I won't go on."

Lyuba leaned to me, her dark eyes angry as she spoke softly, so only I could hear. "You're never content to let the future unfold as it will. You're stubborn, always wanting to change whatever fails to please you. Pitar's to blame for indulging you."

I bit my lip to keep back my denial, digging my fingernails into the palms of my clenched hands, not daring to contradict her.

Lyuba turned from me to look up at the women on the hillside. "Shield your eyes." she ordered and the women either turned away or covered their faces with their cupped hands.

After I dropped my skirt and underskirt to the ground to stand naked, Lyuba nodded at the pool. I waded into the water, wincing at the sudden shock of cold and the rocks biting into the soles of my feet. The bottom of the pool dropped off so sharply it took no more than a few steps before the water reached my thighs. With Lyuba standing at the side of the pool, I had no fear of the deep water, even though I had never learned to swim.

"Lie down," Lyuba told me.

I first sat, shivering until I grew accustomed to the penetrating chill, then I floated on my back, my body buoyed by the water, my hair spreading darkly on the surface of the pool.

Ignoring the water soaking her voluminous skirts, Lyuba waded into the pool to stand beside me, and Mala followed, carrying the earthenware jar. Lyuba reached deep into the jar and brought forth a handful of brown powder that looked like dry, crumbled leaves. She rubbed the gritty substance first on my feet, then on my legs, my arms, my body, my face, and finally into my hair.

"Close your eyes, Tina," she murmured. "Close your eyes."

The crooning tone of Lyuba's voice, the gentle cradle of the water, and the lullaby sung by the stream, quelled my apprehension.

As Lyuba scrubbed my body with a soothing rhythm, the stream eddied around me like the swaying of a slow-moving wagon, and suddenly I remembered what I'd almost succeeded in forgetting.

We'd left our last campground in haste--Pitar didn't explain why--and traveled eastward. When, at twilight, we began to descend a long hill, I jumped down from the family wagon and climbed to the crest of a knoll beside the trail. Just below me our caravan wound slowly into a woods, while across the valley the sun lowered toward the rounded peak of a mountain.

A breeze rustled the leaves over my head, the wagons creaked, and from far away came the faint lonely whistle of a train. As I peered into the distance to try to find the train, sunlight struck my eyes, blinding me so I could no longer see the caravan. My throat tightened and tears stung my eyes as a foreboding--fear mingled with sadness--washed over me, a sense of imminent change and loss, of once more being cast adrift without family or friends.

"You may open your eyes." Lyuba's voice startled me from my reverie.

I obeyed, standing and looking down. I gasped. My body, gleaming in the dappled sunlight, reflected palely from the surface of the pool. I pulled a strand of my hair forward to look at it. My hair, a few moments ago a beautiful brown, was now the color of straw.

"What have you done to me?" I wailed even though, deep down within me, I knew my hair and skin had been tinted weekly with Lyuba's dyes. But after four years I all but believed I truly had a gypsy's coloring. Staring at my yellow hair, I wailed, "I'm ugly!"

"No. Like all of us, you are what you were fated to be."

My lips trembled as I watched the brown film on the water slowly drift downstream. "My pride has been washed from me," I whispered.

"Don't talk foolishness. They will call you beautiful."

"They? What do I care what they say? How do you think I look, Lyuba?"

"I didn't know it mattered to you what I thought," Lyuba said sharply. Her voice softened. "I think you are what you are, no one can be more or less. Come from the water, Tina. Here, dry yourself. Good, now cover your body with this."

Handed a formless white garment, I slipped the strange covering over my head. It came to my knees and from somewhere inside me emerged the name of what I wore. "A shift," I whispered, remembering that when I lived with Grandmother MacArthur I'd worn shifts.

Lyuba turned to the others. "We are ready."

The women hurried down from the hillside, their skirts rustling, to form a staring circle around me, all the while whispering and exclaiming as they nudged one another. Marona grimaced at what she saw, and Ruika narrowed her eyes in distaste.

I was ugly. Any beauty I may have possessed had been washed from me.

"I like your hair," Sasha assured me. "Really I do."

Tears stung my eyes. My friend meant to be kind but what Rom could like such a pale, unnatural color?

"The hamper," Mimi said. "May I open the hamper?"

When Lyuba nodded, Mimi lifted the wicker top. Lyuba walked a few steps away while the women crowded around the hamper, lifting the clothing from inside, displaying undergarments by raising them above their heads, giggling as they postured with the strange clothes held against their bodies. I knew none of the clothes were from my time with Grandmother MacArthur because I'd been barely fourteen when she died. Nothing I'd worn then could possibly fit me now.

"Wait until we dress you, Tina," Mimi said. "You'll be the most elegant lady in all the land of Pennsylvania."

"Put this on." Sasha offered me a long white and black underskirt.

"No," Mimi objected. "The underwaist goes on first."

"You're both wrong," Mala told them with a superior air. "This does."

I recognized what Mala held as something called a corset. Though I'd never worn one, Grandmother MacArthur had. The garment looked stiff and uncomfortable. "Why must I wear a corset?" I asked.

"To alter your natural shape so you'll look like they do. When tied as tightly as possible, the corset thrusts you out at the top." Mala used her hands to demonstrate. "It pinches

you in down here, while pushing you out again in the rear."

The women laughed, shaking their heads in amazed disbelief. I eyed the corset with mistrust.

"Ah," a small girl, said, her eyes alight with the awe that comes from new-found knowledge. "I always thought they were born shaped that way."

"You may all snicker and shake your heads as much as you please," Mala said, "but I have read the truth of it in the book."

Except for myself, Mala was the only one of the band who could read or write.

"The book," Mimi cried, "have you brought the book?"

Mala reached deep into the hamper, then stood triumphant with a thick volume held aloft in her hands. The women clapped in excitement. "The gaje book of a thousand wonders," one of them said.

"Tell us again the name of this book," Mimi begged.

"This is the book the gaje consult to make their wishes come true," Mala said. "It is called the Catalogue of Sears and Roebuck."

"The Catalogue of Sears and Roebuck," the others echoed.

"I will name Tina's garments for you, Mala went on. She pronounced the unfamiliar English words syllable by distinct syllable. "Cor-set, cor-set-cov-er, draw-ers, pet- ti-coat, shirt-waist, skirt."

The naming brought back the memory of my grandmother's small house, and of my life before I came to live with the gypsies. That time seemed so long ago and so far away that I could scarcely recall the girl I had been then. And yet I was she, a gaje whether I wanted to be or not. If the truth be told, there was nothing I wanted less.

The women clustered about me as I dressed, offering advice, pulling the drawstrings of the corset tight until I gasped for breath, watching me fasten the drawers, the petticoats and the skirts.

I lifted the purple outer skirt so I could see to push my feet into narrow black shoes, buttoning them over my ankles. How confining they felt Taking a few experimental steps, I stumbled and almost fell. "I'm a prisoner of these clothes," I protested.

The women, laughing and calling to one another, helped me climb the steep path leading from the glen. As they paraded me along the track to the campground, I felt for all the world like a captured wild animal about to be placed on display. My feet hurt, and the pressure of the corset forced me to take short, shallow breaths.

"Pitar will see you now," Lyuba told me when we entered the camp. The older woman led me to the largest of the wagons and pushed me up the steps. When I turned to her, intending to ask her to come with me, she shook her head as though reading my thoughts, and walked away.

Drawing a deep breath, I stepped through the open door. On the far side of a narrow table, his whiskered face shadowed by the gloom inside the wagon, sat Pitar. He appeared incredibly old to me, though I knew he couldn't have seen many more than fifty summers.

Pitar told me to shut the door and then nodded to a straight-backed chair. I sat rigidly on the chair's edge, not only to show my respect for Pitar, but because the gaje corset permitted no other posture. With the door closed, no sound entered the wagon and in the oppressive silence of our isolation I suddenly, and for the first time, wondered if Pitar was a lonely man.

I watched him strike a match and hold the flame to the wick of a tall black candle, his eyes glinting in the light. When he spread his fingers on the table I saw that his fingers were gnarled and the backs of his hands were brown, covered with tiny gray hairs.

"You have been asked twice," he said. "Now I ask you for the third and final time. Are you ready?"

I drew in my breath, started to speak, then hesitated, looking at my unfamiliar hands--how pale they were!--clasped in my lap. Then I glanced across the table at Pitar, at his graying hair and his dark, lined face, into the brown eyes that seemed warm, yet distant, like home fires viewed from afar. Sasha and I had often made fun of Pitar behind his back, mocking his solemnity, but now I wondered what would have become of our clan without him.

We would have been scattered to the four winds.

Pitar was father of us all, he guided our wanderings and our lives--our wanderings were our lives--the reins held loose in his hands at times, at other times held tight as he settled quarrels with a command, a curse, or a joke.

At first I had half-feared him. At times I had hated him. And now?

"Is it really true that I must go?" I asked. "There's no doubt at all?"

"None."

"Then I'm ready."

"My heart aches to see you leave us."

I put my hand to my mouth to conceal my surprise. When I could speak, my words seemed to come from a stranger, a woman I didn't easily recognize as myself. "My heart aches as well." I realized then that now, mingled with my unease, replacing any fear or hate of him I had once felt, was a generous portion of love.

For many moments we sat in silence. I watched the candle's unwavering flame and the dark rivulets of wax, knowing that ever afterward when I saw a black candle I would think of Pitar.

"So." Pitar pushed his chair back and stood. He wasn't unusually tall, but at that moment his presence seemed to fill the room. "When you leave us today," he said, "you leave behind the name Tina MacArthur as well. Your name among the gaje is Margaret Christina Wentworth."

I stared at him, shocked into speechlessness, the name echoing in my head. Margaret Christina Wentworth. An imposing name, I thought, a harsh name. Only the Christina had been known to me before, because that's what Grandma MacArthur called me. But I'd grown accustomed to being Tina, and wanted to cling to that name. The other names--Margaret and Wentworth were completely unfamiliar. Where had the MacArthur gone?

"My grandmother MacArthur?" I asked.

"She was no blood relative of yours. Your father, Aaron Wentworth, had me take you to her when you were a child of four summers. She had been a servant in your grandfather's house until, late in her life, she married. Her husband passed on before her, and when she died, there was no place for you but with us."

Grandma MacArthur--how could I call her anything else?--had rarely spoken of my father. I'd come to believe both he and my mother were dead.

"Now you have been summoned by your father," Pitar said. "The time has come for you to go to him."

"My father's alive?" My voice rose in excited surprise.

"He is alive, though blind."

Blind? Yet he was alive and I was to go to him! "And my mother?"

Sadness flitted across his face like the shadow of a dark cloud. "She died at your birth. Because the blood of our people flowed in her veins, thus in yours, your father entrusted you to my care in his hour of torment. He was afflicted and afraid, afraid not for himself but for you. Though he never revealed the cause of his fear, I always believed he had an enemy, one who sought vengeance."

The reason for my father's summons seemed clear to me. "This enemy must now be dead and so my father is free to send for me."

Pitar spread his hands. "Who can say? During all these years we have left word with men we trust, telling your father you were well, but we heard nothing from him. Until yesterday. Perhaps when you see your father he will reveal all, perhaps he will not. What will be, will be." Pitar took a small box from a drawer in his desk. "I was told by your father to give you this," he said.

I opened the box. There, nestled in blue velvet, I found a deep purple amethyst set into a gold locket on a gold chain. Pressing a small catch, the cover flew open to reveal a daguerreotype--the face of a beautiful woman. I glanced up at Pitar.

"Yes," he told me, "your mother." He paused as I looked at the picture, wondering what this woman I had never known had been like, wondering whether I resembled her in any way. "Your father," Pitar went on, "said that if ever you needed to know who you were, this locket would help you."

Frowning, I said, "What did he mean?"

Pitar shook his head. "Your father told me no more." After taking a last look at the hauntingly lovely face of the stranger who had been my mother, I reluctantly closed the locket, and fastened the chain around my neck.

"There is something," Pitar went on, "you must learn and learn well. Remember these words: 'The Rainbow comes and goes, and lovely is the Rose.'"

"But what does it mean?"

"The words are from a poem. By a William Wordsworth. The meaning for you?" Pitar shrugged. "You must be patient and it will become clear."

"You've given me a locket and a phrase from a poem. Is there more?"

"You already read and write and speak the gaje tongue. Lyuba has taught you the ways of men and of women. You are prepared."

"But I know little of the gaje world. Grandma MacArthur preferred to speak of the past, the time of her youth. I will make many mistakes."

"Perhaps you are fortunate to be able to enter into that world with unclouded eyes. But our time together is short, so I must ask you our questions for the last time." He leaned toward me. "Who are you?"

This was a familiar catechism. "I am myself. I am responsible only for myself, not for my mother nor my father nor my husband, nor my friend. Only for myself."

"And next in importance to yourself?"

"The family. After the family, the people."

"Who can you trust?"

"Only myself since the enemies of the people are everywhere."

"What can you be?"

"Whatever I am capable of being. Whatever my heart and my mind allow me to be."

"How shall you be judged?"

"Not by what or how much God has bequeathed me, nor by what he may bequeath me in the future. Rather I will be judged by the manner in which I make use of what I have."

Pitar leaned on the table, his gaze fixed on me. "We can give you no more than what we have already given you."

"I was wrong to ask."

"No question asked with a sincere desire for knowledge is ever wrong."

"Then I have another question, Pitar. Why must I leave so suddenly?"

"Your father's message to me urged the utmost haste. I had always planned to return you to him by taking you myself, seeing you safe in his arms." He shook his head. "Now this cannot be. You must travel in secret and, for the most part, alone. For months there have been rumors, tales whispered around the campfires telling of horsemen riding in the night, of questions asked, of hooded men who seek a gaje girl among our people.

"The signs, too, speak of terrible danger. The moon on rising is the color of blood, the horses stampede without cause, the dogs howl even on moonless nights. We leave our campgrounds in haste, we travel with the greatest stealth, yet still they follow us."

I felt the hair on my nape prickle. "Who seeks me? What do they want of me?"

"I do not know." Pitar walked to the rear of the wagon and opened the door. I listened to the familiar sounds of the camp as one might listen to a well-loved song she knows she will never hear again.

"Pitar, this has been my home for four years. I don't want to leave."

He frowned and crossed his arms. "Lyuba tells me you have the gift of our people. That you are able to see beyond the veil of time."

I nodded. "But the seeing comes and goes as it will, not as I will."

"If you stayed with us you would read the future for the gajes. You would tell them their money is cursed, as Lyuba does so well, and you would instruct them to bring it to you so you may cleanse it. Is that what you want?"

Biting my lip, I lowered my head. Much as I respected Lyuba, I had never fully accepted some of the gypsy ways. "No. I couldn't. For me, it's not the path to follow."

"If you stayed with our caravan you'd soon be ready to be a wife. Money would change hands. You work hard, you're cheerful, you would bring a good price. Is that what you want?"

"No! When I marry I'll marry for love."

Pitar smiled at my outburst but sadness darkened his face again as he held out his hand. "Come with me then, Margaret," he said.

The syllables of my new name, my birth name, fell harshly on my ear. I knew then I was no longer Tina and would never again be Tina. Whether I wished it to be so or not, the gypsy camp no longer had a place for me.

Pitar took my hand in his. "The time has come," he said. "Your journey begins."

First Chapter - The Dark Lighthouse by Jane Toombs

THE DARK LIGHTHOUSE

By Jane Toombs

Chapter One

Lisa Womack walked briskly along the midnight-deserted street, shoulder bag swinging, the sound of her heels clicking on the cement sidewalk echoing from the blank-faced apartment buildings. She'd fastened her long hair into a coil at her nape and wore a belted gabardine coat. Just common sense here in Manhattan not to leave loose hair or clothes that could be easily grabbed onto.

The dark trees of New York's Central Park loomed a block ahead, so she slowed her pace.

Hearing a car coming up behind her, she walked faster, careful to look neither right nor left. As the car pulled even with her, it matched her quickened pace. To the right, four stairs led to the glass doors of an apartment house. She measured the distance in her mind.

In case the car brought danger.

"Ms.!" The brusque voice came from the car.

Lisa glanced sideways, letting out her breath in a sigh of relief when she saw the blue uniformed officer in a police squad car.

"Ms.," he repeated. She had an impression of dark eyes scrutinizing her from a hawk-nosed face.

She slowed to a stop, turning toward the car and forcing a smile.

"I wouldn't walk here alone if I were you." The officer nodded to the dark trees less than a block away. "Not this near the park. Not after what's happened these last couple of months."

Lisa knew only too well what he meant. Four young women had been attacked in this section of the park since March and three of them had been raped and beaten. One so badly she died. Only the fortuitous arrival of a mounted patrolman had saved the fourth. Despite an intensive manhunt, the assailant was still at large.

"You could call a cab from the lobby of the Hudson Co-op," the officer suggested. "It's around the corner to your right."

"Thank you," Lisa told him.

The radio in the squad car crackled. The driver listened, grunted, then revved the motor, screeched into a U-turn and roared away with his lights flashing. For a moment Lisa stared after the receding taillights before she turned and walked on.

At the next cross street a cab eased around the corner and swung in her direction, a roaming gypsy prowling for business. The cab slowed, the driver glancing hopefully in Lisa's direction. When she shook her head he accelerated past, leaving a wake of exhaust fumes to foul the cool May night.

From the street corner across from the park she looked to her right, where the canopy of the Hudson Co-op extended over the sidewalk from the entrance of the converted nineteenth century mansion to Central Park West. A uniformed security guard stood vigil at the top of the steps with his hands clasped behind him.

After a moment's hesitation, Lisa straightened her shoulders and, raising her chin determinedly, crossed the street. As she stepped onto the curb a man's voice called to her. Startled, she whirled around. The doorman, a square-faced man no older than she, had left his post and was waving to her from beneath the end of the canopy. "Lady, you ain't going into that park." It was more of a statement than a question.

"It's shorter this way," she told him.

He shook his head and, even from this distance, she saw the concern on his face. She could well imagine what he was thinking: Why is such a vulnerable young woman here alone at this time of night? And why is she taking the risk of entering the dark and forbidding park?

"You from out of town, lady?" he asked.

Lisa almost smiled, knowing that, to a New Yorker, visitors were capable of untold acts of foolishness. She shook her head. "I live in the Village."

He turned from her with a shrug, the gesture saying he'd done his best so nobody could blame him for what might happen.

Ahead, a path curved into the park, the way shrouded in darkness despite the feeble rays from a globed light a hundred feet ahead. Lisa walked purposefully past a bench but couldn't help glancing at the headline on a discarded Post that was all too clear even in the midnight gloom: NO CLUES IN PARK RAPIST HUNT.

No, she wouldn't think about the assailant who might be lurking in there. Hiding in the midnight shadows of the trees. Waiting. Waiting for her. She refused to give in to the unease crawling along her spine, chilling her body with icy fingers of apprehension.

She shut away her fear as best she could and walked on. The glow from the great city surrounding the park reflected palely from clouds hovering overhead in the moonless sky but the light failed to penetrate to the path where Lisa walked beneath the over-reaching branches of trees and shrubs. This was an alien, rural world.

At least it was alien to her. She was a city person, much as her father had been. She loved the excitement of crowds, the pushing and shoving, the flowing masses of men and women rushing here and there. She reveled in the city's sounds, the strident clamor of taxi horns, the shouts of street vendors, the rumble of the subways. She enjoyed breathing the aromas of the metropolis, the sharp scents of food from the restaurants, even the fumes from the thousands of cars, trucks and buses.

Only when the wind came off the Atlantic and the tang of the eastern sea swept up the skyscraper-walled canyons did she feel a sense of unease. It was then the haunting memory returned and again she saw the white blur of the lighthouse through the twilight fog while her father worked frantically to restart the boat's outboard motor. Beneath a glowering sky, the sea around them roiled into white-capped turmoil.

Lisa shook her head, impatient with herself. The past was over and done with. She needed to pay attention to the here and now. The park wasn't really alien it was a part of the city, a place where she'd played as a child, skated in winter, rode along the bridle paths, fed the pigeons. During the day. The only time she'd been here at night was to sit on the grass with many other New Yorkers at open-air concerts during the summers. She'd never rowed on the lake, though. Boats didn't appeal to her.

Tonight was different. The path ahead darkened. The next lamp was out. A low hill rose to her left, trees loomed on her right. Refusing to alter her steady pace, she walked on with the only sound in the warm night the distant murmur of city traffic. In the hush she became aware of the throbbing beat of her heart and the rasp of her breathing.

Were those footsteps behind her? Or was it the faint echo of her own steps? No, the sound of the footsteps didn't quite match hers, failing by a heartbeat every few paces, to anticipate or follow hers.

When Lisa hesitated for an instant, the sound of footfalls pulsed plainly through the silence. Fear uncoiled in her stomach. Someone was following her! She walked faster and veered onto a left-hand path. The steps followed. She turned once more, to the right this time, increasing her pace until she was almost running.

From behind came a man's gloating laugh. Her breath caught in her throat. Resisting the impulse to break and run, she looked over her shoulder to peer into the gloom. She saw nothing. Again the laugh, high-pitched and inane. From farther away now. A drunken laugh. The footsteps receded until they faded into nothingness.

Lisa tried to deny the apprehension, the fear. Yet she couldn't, even though she'd never been easily alarmed. Here in the park the danger was real. Almost palpable. The tips of her fingers tingled. It was Central Park itself that alarmed her, she cautioned herself, this rectangular wilderness island in the center of the city, this attempt by landscape designers to interrupt the natural symmetry of stone, concrete and steel. She was a relative stranger here as she wasn't a stranger in the Village, on 42nd Street, or the lower East Side.

Another lamp beside the path beckoned from ahead, the light on the sidewalk and the grass creating a circle of seeming safety. She was some twenty paces from the light when the hissing started. Lisa tensed, imagining a snake coiled and ready to strike-a venomous, writhing reptile hidden in the concealing darkness.

Don't be ridiculous, she told herself. There were no poisonous snakes in the Park. Besides, she now realized the noise came from up ahead. Approaching.

Lisa stopped, puzzled by the sound. Then she saw its source. Of course, she should have known. A bicycle swooped toward her, its tires hissing on the pavement. The rider, hunched forward over the handlebars, was dressed in dark clothing with a black cloth cap pulled low on his forehead.

Relaxing, Lisa stepped onto the grass to let the bicyclist speed by. She frowned-although a headlamp was mounted on the handlebars, the lamp was unlit. It was dangerous to ride in the park at night without a light, someone could get hurt. More than the headlight was wrong. She couldn't make out the face of the onrushing rider, shadowed as it was by the cap. In fact, he didn't seem to have a face. She stared in surprise and growing consternation. The bike was almost upon her now. No face? The rider must have a face.

He had to be wearing some kind of mask, which meant only one thing. A shock of fear quivered up her spine, gooseflesh rose on her arms. Stepping farther away from the path, Lisa slid her hand into her shoulder bag.

The rider braked abruptly, making the bike skid across the pavement toward her. The man-muscular and compactly built-leaped clear of his falling bike and sprang at her, swinging his arm at the bag she held in front of her like a shield. His thrust knocked it from her hands, but the strap held and sent it swinging around in back of her. His fingers brushed her shoulder as he reached for her throat.

Lisa grabbed the visor of his cap and yanked it down, at the same time noting he wore a stocking mask that covered his face. Momentarily blinded, her attacker stumbled forward. She twisted from his grasp and ran, almost falling as she came to the fringe of trees. She sensed he was close behind.

Again she reached in her bag, found the container and pulled it out as she spun around. Fear fell away, replaced by grim determination. The man's cap was gone. The stocking over his head gave him the eerie look of an eyeless mannequin. He lunged at her. She pressed the nozzle and the Mace sprayed a steady stream into his face. He gasped in surprise, his hands jerked up to shield himself.

Lisa grasped the man's right wrist, yanked him forward and, while he was off-balance, flipped him onto his back on the ground. He grunted in pain, raising his arm, not to attack her again but almost in supplication, as a drowning man might fling his hand above the surface of the sea in a last attempt to save himself.

For a horrible moment she saw her father staring at her from the turbulent Pacific waters, once more she watched with a ten-year-old's terror and helplessness as he reached for the side of the boat in one last desperate attempt to stay afloat. Her fingers clutched his and she held to him until a wave smashed down on them, upending the boat, tossing her into the ocean and wrenching her father's hand from hers.

When she'd looked at the sea after the teen-aged boy had carried her to the shore, her father was gone. His body was never recovered-the Pacific Ocean had claimed him as its own.

Lisa forced the memory away. On the ground, her assailant was trying to roll over and get up. Crouching, she reached to him, found the pressure point on his neck and thrust down. His head jerked to one side and his body slumped into unconsciousness.

She stood, brushing off her skirt, trembling. Drawing in a deep breath, she slid her hand inside her bag and pressed the button that would summon help. Looking down at the helpless man, she leaned toward him to pull the stocking mask from his face.

Though she really didn't want to know what he looked like, she'd have to identify him, so she yanked off the mask and stared at his red hair and his freckled moon-shaped face with a scar running along the left cheek. Though she looked for only a few seconds, she knew she'd never forget him.

~ * ~

"You weren't able to call for help any sooner?" the reporter from the Times asked.

"There just wasn't time," Lisa said. "I never expected him to be riding a bike."

"Ummm." The reporter seemed to doubt her. "You were hired to find the rapist? To act as a decoy?"

Lisa sipped the precinct house's steaming black coffee, trying to be patient despite her fatigue, knowing the reporter was in a hurry to meet a deadline.

"One victim's family paid me a retainer. I'm afraid I can't give you their name."

The reporter shrugged, making a notation on her pad. "The cops aren't too thrilled, I gather, though they're putting a good face on it. This is twice in the last year you've stolen their thunder. 'New coup for five foot two Ms. Blue Eyes' was the way Eyewitness News put it. I'd say you were on a winning roll. "

Lisa shrugged. "As a private investigator I always cooperate with the police."

"In the long run." The reporter grinned and stood up. "Any plans for the future?"

"California," Lisa said without thinking, surprising herself. She paused before going on. "I'm planning on taking a vacation along the coast near Eureka."

The reporter made a note before jamming her pad into her totebag. "Live long and prosper."

Lisa smiled goodbye.

Eureka: the coast where her father drowned sixteen years before. Something about the attack in the park had triggered the memories she'd tried to repress. It seemed she'd known all along she had to go back, had to go to California again to try to find out what really happened so many years before.

Until she did, she'd find no peace, none at all.

Excerpt - High Risk by Jane Toombs

HIGH RISK Prologue

The take-off roar of a 747 blasted across the tarmac as Clint Hastings strode through L.A.'s smog-diffused sunlight to the private pad where the small, sleek jet waited.

Keep cool, man, he urged himself as he stifled an impulse to glance behind him. No one from the casino's going to check at the bank for at least two days. Nothing can go wrong.

His skin prickled with unease. As though an invisible being trailed him.

Clint straightened his shoulders. He didn't believe that shit. Anyone with half knew there was nothing in the stories the old men told. Hell, he'd never even heard about invisible watchers until his mother caught up with him and dragged him off to the reservation when he was twelve.

He shifted the heavy suitcase to his left hand and slowed his pace. I'm no more a goddamned Indian that Powers is, he assured himself. Why couldn't the old lady leave well enough alone? She didn't want me when I was born, why'd she expect I'd want any part of her and her people when I grew up?

The pilot stepped from the jet's shadow and approached him, his glance taking in Clint's beige suit, bronze shirt and tie. Poor bastard, Clint thought.

"Nice day for a jump," the pilot said. "You making it in that outfit?"

"You fly this crate," Clint said, "and I'll take care of the rest. Okay?"

The pilot shrugged and turned back toward the jet.

Once they were in the air, Clint unsnapped his safety belt and opened the suitcase. He carefully lifted out an attaché case and slid it just as carefully out of sight under the seat. More of Powers' careful elimination of any witness, but bombs made him nervous. He stripped to his shorts and took a jumpsuit from the suitcase. By this time tomorrow there’d be Sara.

He zipped up the jumpsuit. He wanted Sara Powers--God, how he wanted her. The sound of her hesitant voice on the phone yesterday had made him hard right there in the booth. She was so small, so helpless, so elegant. A lady. Randall Power's lady.

His lips curled into a half-smile. He planned to change that. All it took was money. The money would give him Sara. Among other things.

He fastened a thick width of leather around his waist and stared from the jet's window. The smog was far below; the sky was cloudless. Beneath him the Tehachapis leveled off into the great basin of the San Joaquin Valley. He checked his watch. Powers had timed this to the second. In a few minutes he'd tell the pilot the jump would be sooner than planned.

"Don't let him know until you're approaching the Sierras," Powers had said. "Tell him there's a bonus waiting in Reno if he keeps the switch to himself. When the chute deploys, keep your eye out for the yellow X in the meadow. "

Clint nodded. Powers thought of everything.

Everything except me. Powers doesn't have a clue about my plans or about me and Sara. He sat on the edge of the seat, smiling to himself, seeing Sara's blue eyes, her fair hair.

"I wish you wouldn't take these risks," she'd said when she'd called him back three days ago, before she left for the lodge. "What if Floyd tells Randall you called?"

"Floyd didn't recognize my voice."

"You shouldn't have taken the chance. For all I know, Randall monitors every call."

"I doubt that."

Sara sighed. "He doesn't miss much."

"All he can find out is that a man called you and left a phone number. This is a phone booth, Sara. Relax, we took enough chances last fall and never got caught."

"I must have been crazy."

"You drove me crazy. You still do."

Her soft intake of breath ignited him but all she said was, "Randall and I leave for Deerhead Lodge this afternoon."

"Everything's set?"

"Marlyn and Elise are both coming. It'll work out."

The phone had clicked in his ear before he could say anything more.

Clint's smile faded as he checked the .44 Remington magnum in his arm holster. He didn't exactly figure on trouble with Powers but he'd have no qualms about using the gun if he had to.

He lifted two large, heavy pouches from the suitcase and unbuckled his thick leather belt to slide them onto it, one to either side, then refastened the parachute harness. Almost like dropping into South America that time, going in loaded.

Had he overlooked anything? The bunch at the casino hadn't a clue, he was

sure. To them he was old buddy Clint, a blood brother, returning to the tribe when they needed him. Why should they suspect? Damn it, he'd worked hard to help them get the casino set up and running. Even now, when it was pulling in money hand over fist, he’d helped out when they asked him.

So they'd find out you can't trust anyone. You'd think Indians--no, what the hell, they were Native Americans now--would know better after undergoing two hundred years of having their faces shoved in shit. He had a slight twinge of guilt about one thing only--his half-brother.

Clint grimaced. He'd tried to sound Frank out, sort of wanting to let him in on it, but his brother was one thick-headed Indian. Once he realized Frank was a complete straight arrow type, he'd shut up, not daring to let him suspect what was going down. You couldn't trust anyone. Not even your brother.

Not even Randall Powers?

With his hand touching the switch on the attaché case, Clint hesitated. It wasn't too late to fly on to Reno and forget the jump. Keep the money. Get out of the country. Forget Powers.

That'd mean forgetting Sara, too.

How long would he last with Powers after him? Powers and those types Powers dealt with, men even Powers was polite to. Powers was taking a chance by shafting one of them--Bandini. If Clint Hastings was dumb enough to take all the money, Powers and Bandini would team up and zap--he'd be ashes.

Carrying out Powers' orders was a better shot. And safer. With some modifications in his own favor. Like Sara.

Clint flicked a switch on the attaché case. Now there was no turning back. . .

Excerpt - The Outcast by Jane Toombs

The Outcast by Jane Toombs


Fifteen-year-old Jehenna Scovia hung back, eyeing the great black engine hissing out steam like her gypsy grandmother told her dragons did, along with fire, in the old days. In those olden day stories, maidens had knights to battle the dragons, but there was no one to battle anything for her. She knew the orphan train from New York City had stopped here especially to pick her up, arranged by her father, who'd had one of his men deliver her to the station. She'd be willing to bet none of the girls already aboard were like her—a half-gypsy outcast no one wanted.

Chances are no one would want her where this orphan train was going, either.
A hand grasped her shoulder—the man who'd brought her here. He marched her to the train car and shoved her aboard. No use to struggle. As Grandma Luba would say, Jehenna's fate was cast.

The train lurched forward. Seeing no empty seats, Jehenna eased down next to a younger girl—maybe about ten--who clutched a tattered little doll close to her and murmured to the doll in a language Jehenna didn't understand. Across the aisle another girl, older than the doll girl and pretty, with auburn hair, stared at the floor rather than looking at Jehenna. Which was fine with her.

Then the girl sitting next to the one with downcast eyes said, "I'm Shauna—and she's Abigail, but we call her Abby, You're sitting next to Katrina. She pointed. That’s Galen over there and there’s Isabel. What's your name?"

As Jehenna told Shauna, Abby raised her head. Seeing the younger girl's eyes were bright with tears, Jehenna said, "Don't cry. Maybe things will work out for you." A pretty girl had a better chance, didn't she?

A dark-haired girl who already had a woman's figure leaned across the aisle.toward Abby. "Stop worrying. We gotta believe it’s gonna be all right.”

Next to Jehenna, Katrina sighed, her expression clearly saying she wanted to believe them, but couldn’t.

Wishing she could console both the younger ones, Jehenna couldn’t think of anything more that might. Even though she was sure nothing would ever work out for her, she hated to think little kids might ever be mistreated.

The dark–haired girl named Galen stood up and said, ."We got a lot of hard work ahead of us, that’s what.. No easy row to hoe for any of us. We might not know what’s coming, maybe not much like it, but we can stand up for ourselves. That's what I mean to do."

Isabel rose and joined her. "Okay, Galen, for better or worse, we're all starting a new life out there somewhere." She thrust out her chin. I'm looking forward to mine."
"Me, too," Shauna said, easing past Abigail to stand next to them.

Abby stared at them for a moment, tears gone. "A new life," she murmured, then joined the other girls.

But maybe not a better one, for all of us, Jehenna thought.

"So we won't ever give up," Galen said, looking at Jehenna. "How about we make a pact that In ten years time we'll meet someplace fancy. "Might as well go for the best. Make it Boston, at the Omni Parker House Hotel. Let's see, that'd be August 17, 1878. Everyone agree? Come on, we'll hold hands and make the pact."

Katrina got up, eased past Jehenna, then held out her hand. "You come," she said in her accented voice. "You are one of us."

Jehenna had no intention of making any kind of pact with the others, certainly not a foolish promise to meet in ten years, but bitter experience had shown her it was always best to look like you wanted to fit in. She rose and walked hand in hand with Katrina to the others. Shauna reached for her other hand.

"Meet you in Boston! " Isabel cried. "Ten years from now."

As they all murmured agreement, Abby warned, "The agent's coming. We better sit down."

Katrina held Jehenna's hand as they scuttled back to their seat, smiling at her as they eased down onto the bench. Poor kid needed a friend. Jehenna sighed. How could she make the little girl understand that an outcast couldn't be anyone's true friend. Ever.